


Sugared Mushrooms

by EllieMurasaki



Category: Echo Bazaar
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:12:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/EllieMurasaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You experiment with cookery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sugared Mushrooms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [who_la_hoop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/who_la_hoop/gifts).



Balsamic vinegar! That's the secret to _proper_ sugared mushrooms, or so you hear whispered. Balsamic vinegar: imported, not merely from the Surface, but from _Italy_.

Vinegar is vinegar, you hope. Vinegars made from Surface wine you expect will clash flavors with the mushrooms, and are hideously expensive in any event; Greyfields vinegar is better, but not by much, and you have wine already. You need to save your moon-pearls and jade for the sugar, which comes from the Surface; there's no way around that. Sunlight makes sugar.

So you leave a bottle of the 1879 open for two weeks, and at the end of that you have a bottle of pleasingly sour liquid. You chop and sauté some mushrooms till they are warm and brown, then add a cupful of the vinegar and a cupful of the horribly expensive sugar. A sprinkle of salt to bring out the flavors, and you let it simmer for some time, until the sugar melts into a syrup and the syrup becomes thick.

You taste the mushrooms, and though you're reasonably sure you're using the same variety of mushrooms as at least one of the old ladies of Ladybones Road, your work tastes nothing like hers. You prove this by taking a trip to Ladybones Road just to buy candied mushrooms, many varieties from many vendors, _none_ of whom, you're certain, can afford vinegar from Italy. Or, for that matter, sugar.

You indulge in a honey-dream that night for unrelated reasons—the stress of the Neath gets to you sometimes, that's all. The taste of the honey reminds you, in the moments before the dream takes you, of the mushrooms you bought in Ladybones Road.

Maybe the secret is not balsamic vinegar after all.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [...that not seen in dreams (the sugared lies mixtape)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/398285) by [amaresu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaresu/pseuds/amaresu)




End file.
